The Best Tech To Buy In October 2013

The Best Tech To Buy in October

Too late for back-to-school specials and too early for holiday sales, October is viewed by many shoppers as the retail calendar's most awkward month. Simply put, it's tough to assess what - if anything - is really the best buy during the month of October.

But as it turns out, October is more than just a confounding retail curiosity for bargain hunters. In fact, within the last few years, as leading mobile tech companies solidified their annual product release cycles, October has become a popular time of year to purchase a host of new gadgets.

Since October 2011, Apple has refreshed its iPhone line (iPhone 5c & iPhone 5s, both free with contract) in the early days of the fall season, giving consumers a consistent seasonal upgrade opportunity. As a result, October is now widely seen as an excellent time of year to upgrade, trade-in, or find an excellent bargain on a new, refurbished, or previous generation iPhone.

October's Other Opportunities

Beyond smartphones, there's usually no shortage of fantastic sales available to those in the market for new consumer technologies typically of the mobile variety. Although some argue that the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas every January is the best time to find the hottest new tech, the CES showroom floor isn’t necessarily conducive to the best deals around. Quite frankly, many of the flashy new gadgets introduced at CES aren't discounted until late summer or early fall, which is perfect for tech buyers in the former retail doldrums of October.

This year, October could very well pan out to be a great time to get what some expect to emerge as the supreme tablet of our time - Apple's iPad 5. Rumored to be introduced later this month and available for preorder shortly thereafter, the iPad 5 is poised for blockbuster sales in time for the holidays.

Of course, if you need a new tablet but don't require the latest state-of-the-art hardware, this month will still be ideal for scoring a previous generation iPad 4 - Starting at $419.00. Correspondingly, as the market anticipates Apple's refreshed touchscreen tablet, there will be plenty of bargains available across numerous product lines in the coming weeks.

Of course, there's also no shortage of forthcoming sales action for those outside of the iOS ecosystem. Microsoft, for instance, has already opened preorders for Windows 8.1, the eagerly anticipated update arriving later this month.

Mid-month, Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX (currently priced at $229.00) will ship, ramping up the pre-holiday sales rivalry among today’s top tablet makers. Clearly, it’s a perfect storm for shoppers who stand to benefit from lower, more competitive pricing - and not just within the tablet market.

As iOS- and Android-powered tablets continue to erode traditional PC sales, leading tech makers will be forced to serve up a healthy bounty of discounts for this generation’s most advanced laptops purely to curtail the rapid loss of market share that computer manufacturers are waging an uphill battle to combat.

The Bottom Line for Shopping in October

All told, October is no longer a vast retail wilderness devoid of new products or terrific deals. It's a new era in technology and October is now a hotbed of activity for hardware and software giants whose respective product release cycles seem to favor the early weeks of autumn.